


One Time Over Coffee

by Blissymbolics



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Angst, M/M, Time Travel, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-16
Updated: 2019-08-16
Packaged: 2020-09-01 20:06:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20263789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blissymbolics/pseuds/Blissymbolics
Summary: Eventually, Ed lowers the paper. The air around them feels still, and ageless.Roy braces himself. Feels a shift. A change. An ending.Then, it happens.“Al is dead.”





	One Time Over Coffee

**Author's Note:**

> I missed yesterday but happy RoyEd Week work #3!

It happened over coffee.

Ed was slouched over the kitchen table, glaring down at the scribbled graph paper in front of him, taking sips of coffee whenever he needed an excuse to rest his eyes.

Something went wrong at the lab yesterday, and he was up past two in the morning searching for the bug in his code. But no matter how he arranged the numbers, something always came up short.

“You got a letter from Al,” Roy says with a smile, knowing that the envelope in his hand should be an effective antidote.

Sure enough, Ed’s head perks up like an excited puppy.

“Really? Give me.” He stretches out his arm as far as it can reach.

Roy hands him the envelope. It’s made from lovely handmade paper with delivery instructions inscribed in both Xingese and Amestrian. Ed snatches it from his hand and immediately tears it open, mutilating the obviously expensive paper.

Roy takes his seat and spoons some sugar into his own coffee, patiently waiting for Ed to finish so he can give him the highlights.

He raises his eyes from his cup, expecting to see unparalleled joy plastered across Ed’s face.

But instead. There’s shock. And disorientation. Roy holds his breath. Waiting to receive whatever bad news Ed is currently absorbing.

Eventually, Ed lowers the paper. The air around them feels still, and ageless.

Roy braces himself. Feels a shift. A change. An ending.

Then, it happens.

“Al is dead.”

-

When a young person dies, it’s more than a simple tragedy.

Their death leaves behind a hole in space and time.

Roy can feel Al’s absence. A secular version of his ghost. All that unspent energy. He can feel it vibrating in the air. All the good he would have done. All the lives he would have saved. Years and decades, people who would have known him, places he would have changed. All that life, sitting stagnant with nowhere to go. An existential emptiness that will never be satiated.

According to Ling’s letter, Al died from a strain of influenza. A common ailment that cycles through Xing every winter and always claims a number of children and elderly in its path. It’s rare for healthy young adults to perish under its influence, but Al lacked the resistance that most Xingese natives naturally acquire over a lifetime of exposure.

He was buried in the royal gardens according to Amestrian tradition, even though the Xingese favor cremation and find burying the dead both unclean and inauspicious. But the Emperor commanded it, and so it was done.

And in a way, Roy wishes that he hadn’t. Of course he understands that it would be senseless to try to ship his body across the desert. And it would be unhygienic and potentially dangerous to delay the funeral until Ed could be present.

But now, Ed will never find closure. He’ll never get to say goodbye to his brother. He’ll never get to touch his skin in death and mourn over his remains. To see his face one last time before saying goodbye.

He’s simply gone. An empty gap. A wound that will never heal.

What was the point of it all? All those sacrifices? All those years of pain and compromise? The childhood Ed threw away, the scars of trauma and injury, the alchemy he lost, the world he saved. What was the point of it all if Al was only granted five years of breath and blood? Five years spent in the armor, and five years outside of it is all that equivalent exchange earned him.

And Ed grieves with such force that it seems to splinter the earth’s core. He grieves with every breath. Every breeze is a gash against his skin. He is a creature split in two. No amount of recovery will restore his stolen half. He will suffer every day for the rest of his life. And all Roy can do is pray that he can endure it until that day arrives naturally, as it does for them all.

Roy takes a month off of work, and feels sick to admit that he’s thankful when it’s over. The emaciated atmosphere, the dead conversations, the acrid smell of grief that has soaked into the walls of their home like cigarette smoke.

He needed to get out. Find solace in the real world. A world that still exists despite Al’s absence.

He calls Ed from work everyday during his lunch break to talk about nothing. Ed knows why he makes the calls, but they never discuss it. If Roy has to guilt Ed into staying, then he’ll swallow that guilt for the sake of keeping Ed alive.

But one day, Ed doesn’t answer.

Roy calls again. Counting the rings. Suspended in the noise. Waiting. Waiting.

No answer.

He calls again.

Nothing.

He grabs his keys and darts out of the office. Walking as fast as he can, but restraining himself from breaking into a run.

He should be running. He should be sprinting. And he feels disgusted with himself for allowing benign decorum to hold him back.

Traffic stretches on endlessly. He's being strangled by the brutality of this nightmare. He considers abandoning the car in the street and just running. He should have been running all along. If he’s too late because he refused to run, then he might as well end himself at Ed’s side.

“Ed!” he shouts, his hands trembling as he finally manages to unlock the front door.

“Ed!”

He spins in a circle at the base of the stairs. Dizzy and delirious, trying to look everywhere all at once. Every corner and every angle. And when he finds no sign of him, he sprints up the stairs.

“Ed!”

“What?!”

Roy feels relief so profound that it probably qualifies as a religious experience. He takes a moment to close his eyes, savor the serenity, express gratitude that the nightmare is over. For the time being at least.

Ed’s voice is coming from the guest room, where he began sleeping shortly after the news arrived.

Ed pulls the door open as Roy approaches, dressed in a regular set of street clothes with his hair brushed and pulled back in a ponytail.

He looks angry. As if Roy just disturbed something very important.

“Where were you?”

“The library. Do I need a fucking permission slip?”

“No, it’s just…” Roy glances over his shoulder to see that there are indeed several books strewn across his bed. “I always call you during lunch. And when you didn’t answer–”

“You thought I’d offed myself. Don’t worry, I’ve still got shit to do.”

With that, he slams the door shut.

-

The weeks stagger on. The weather grows colder. Ed guards his room like a manic king. Locking himself inside and refusing to respond to Roy’s voice through the door.

Roy has no idea what he’s researching, but he would be a fool to discount the very real possibility that Ed is preparing – once again – to commit human transmutation. But he doesn’t have his alchemy anymore. So realistically, what can he actually do?

If it were anyone else, anyone else in the world, then Roy would have faith in Ed’s ability to accept death in its permanent form.

But Al is the exception. Al would always be the exception.

Al was everything. Al was the food he ate, the bed he slept in, the clothes he wore. Al was the pivot, the axis, the meridian of his world. And as the weeks go by, Roy grows increasingly certain that Ed is searching for a way to trade his own life in exchange.

But what can Roy do to stop him short of having him institutionalized? He can’t just quit his job to watch over him day and night. But Ed has been refusing any form of help, and won’t even speak when Roy is present in the house. He only leaves to acquire more books, and then barricades himself in the maladaptive shelter he’s constructed for himself.

He needs closure. He needs to adapt. He needs to find some purpose in living apart from his brother.

And it rots Roy to his core to know that he will never be enough.

-

“Hey, can you come here for a minute?” Ed calls from the kitchen.

Roy just walked through the front door. His fingers are numb and his toes feel frostbitten through his boots.

Ed hasn't spoken in over a week. So he quickly yanks off his boots and follows his voice down the hall.

He's sitting at their small, round kitchen table. Only big enough for two.

It’s the place where everything started. And ended.

It was a year ago that Roy first invited Ed over for breakfast, where they mutually felt something spark between sips of coffee. They began to crave each other’s company. They spoke on the phone at all hours of the night and began touching each other in small gestures that steadily evolved into meaningful caresses.

Ed will never be the same person that Roy fell in love with. That taste of coffee is now burnt. There’s no resolution. No future. And honestly, Roy’s not sure how much more of this he can endure.

Ed is wearing a long sleeve shirt that’s still too thin for the cold. His limp hair is falling loose around his shoulders, and his skin looks sickly in the overhead lights. It’s been three months since the news arrived, and Roy doesn’t know how much more weight Ed can afford to lose. How many more sleepless nights his body can handle. How much more of himself he has left to spare.

“What’s going on?” Roy asks gently, noticing a sealed envelope lying in the center of the table. The inscription side is facing down, so Roy can’t see who it’s addressed to, if anyone.

Roy takes a seat across from him, slow and hesitant, as if he were approaching a deer in the forest.

Finally, Ed sighs, and raises his bloodshot eyes.

“I just wanted to say thank you,” Ed whispers, choking on his tears before he can finish. “For everything you’ve done for me. For letting me stay with you. For letting me know you. You made me so, so happy. And I should’ve told you that more. I was just stupid and thought it’d last forever.”

“Are you leaving me?” Roy asks, tears already sliding down his cheeks.

“No.” Ed shakes his head. “I’m never gonna do that.”

Roy feels his body decompress, but the tears keep falling.

Ed sniffs, wipes his eyes, then reaches forward to grasp Roy’s hands. He gently pulls them forward, rubbing his thumbs in small circles around his palms and then leaning forward to kiss his fingertips.

“I’ll always love you,” Ed sobs, tears dripping onto Roy’s hands. “No matter what happens. No matter who we turn out to be. Remember how much I love you.”

Roy can barely see beyond the film covering his eyes.

_I love you. _This is the first time Ed has said it.

Roy doesn’t know what to make of this, but for the first time since Al’s death, he feels the faintest twinge of hope for the future.

Roy will help him get there. Whatever he needs, whatever it takes, Roy will find a way to make him whole again.

“I love you too.”

…

“I’m sorry,” Ed whispers.

And before Roy can ask what he’s sorry for, Ed bolts up from his chair and slams Roy’s palms flat against the table.

Suddenly, the glow of a transmutation circle appears around the circumference. Delicate lines weaving atop the grain, burning beneath Roy’s hands. Invisible ink? It must be. But why?

“What are you doing?!” Roy shouts. He tries to pull his hands away, but Ed is bearing down with all the strength of a man clinging to the edge of a cliff. The force of his weight is so intense that sharp bolts of pain begin shooting up from the scars on the palms of Roy’s hands, causing him to wail between clenched teeth.

The energy cracks around them. Roy feels the muscles in his wrists sprain as he tries to escape. Then suddenly, the envelope lying in the center of the table begins to disintegrate. The paper deconstructing into nothing.

“I’m sorry.”

* * *

“What the fuck is this?” Ed asks, holding out his mug.

“Coffee?” Roy answers, quirking his head in confusion.

“It can’t be coffee. It doesn’t taste like battery acid and there aren’t any black flakes floating around.”

“It’s coffee that wasn’t made in an office or a train station.”

“Ah, that explains it. I think I’ve–”

Suddenly, the air between them snaps like a bolt of lightning. Both of them reflectively lean back in their chairs, watching as something in the center of the table sparks and cracks. Then out of nowhere, something begins to materialize. An object. An envelope. Reconstructed out of thin air.

Then a second later, the energy is gone. The light returns to normal. And between them lies a perfectly innocuous white envelope, with only the faintest markings of a fresh transmutation.

Roy stares at Ed from across the table, then back down at the letter, blinking tight just in case it’s all a dream.

“I think it’s for you.”

“Why the fuck would it be for me? It’s your house.”

“Yes, but this seems more like your brand of crazy.”

After a few seconds of silently daring each other, Ed lets out a groan.

“Fine. If you’re gonna be chicken about it.”

He reaches out and gives the envelope a few experimental pokes before picking it up.

“Oh, look at that, it is for me,” he says, flipping it in Roy’s direction to display the name 'Ed' written in bold capitals.

Roy watches as he tears it open, a look of excited trepidation plastered on his face.

Roy waits patiently as he reads whatever the paper contains. But his curiosity seems to quickly dissolve into unease the farther he reads.

Roy has seen plenty of strange things in his lifetime. Forms of alchemy both dazzling and horrifying. Whatever this is, it’s certainly not the most egregious or theatrical violation of the laws of physics he’s ever seen, but whatever it is, it’s definitely something new.

“This is a fucking joke,” Ed says, looking down at the paper in front of him with disgust. “It says that if Al goes to Xing this summer, he’ll get sick and die.”

Roy’s defenses immediately spike. This is a threat then. A warning from someone who wishes them harm.

“Apparently this is the letter Ling will send me to tell me about it.”

Ed holds up a second sheet of paper, thinner and darker than the first. He passes it over to Roy, who obediently begins reading it without truly absorbing anything.

This doesn’t make sense. A threat is one thing, but fabricated evidence of a future death?

“And if all that isn’t weird enough, apparently I’m fucking brilliant and invented some localized form of time travel so I could send this letter back in time. And to fuck with my head even more, I think this is my handwriting. Or at least a grandmaster forgery of it.”

“Let me see.” Roy reaches out, and Ed hands it over without complaint.

Roy quickly reads through it, paying more attention to the loops of the Os and the curves of the Bs than the actual content.

“I’m no graphologist, but I’ve been reading your handwriting since you were twelve, and as far as I can tell, this is a pitch perfect forgery.”

“Yeah, but let’s suspend our disbelief. Let’s say it’s real.”

“Which it isn’t.”

“Oh, so you’re doubting my ability to invent time travel?”

“I doubt your ability to cook an egg without giving me food poisoning. But there are all kinds of scams this could be. I’ve never heard of anyone successfully transmuting an object via what I can only describe as teleportation, but that would make a hell of a lot more sense than _time travel._”

“Okay, let’s say it is a scam. Knocking out time travel entirely, what does anyone have to gain by keeping Al from going to Xing? Hardly anyone even knows that Al is going yet. We only decided it last week.”

“I don’t know. But someone wants him to stay in the country for some reason. And is obviously willing to go to great lengths to keep him here.”

“Then just fuck with his passport or some shit. Or rough him up and put him in the hospital. Don’t go out and just casually invent teleportation.”

“Fair point. I don’t know. This is beyond my pay grade.”

“You’re a State Alchemist. This is exactly the kind of shit you get paid for.”

“I get paid to babysit you and that’s it.”

Ed glares at him, scrunching his brow in annoyance.

“How about this? Al’s not leaving for at least another four months. I can work with him to see if we can figure out whatever theoretical time travel shit this might be. If I really did invent it myself, then I should be able to follow all the same steps. If we can verify that this is beyond the realm of theoretics, then I’ll take future me’s word for it.”

“And if you turn out to be right, then I’m guessing you won’t let Al leave the country.”

“If I turn out to be right then I’m never letting Al step out of the house ever again.”

Whilst talking, he stands from the table and grabs his coat draped over the back of the chair.

“I gotta go. Thanks for breakfast. I’ll keep you posted.”

With that, he darts out of the kitchen.

-

Surprisingly, it only took several weeks of research.

Just as he suspected, it was easy to follow his own internal logic. It was like walking through a forest, following notches in the trees that his future self left to mark the trail. He would lift books off the shelves of the library and feel an eerie sense of deja vu. As he organized his findings, it was like putting together a puzzle that he had already completed once before.

With the letter at his disposal, it was easy to analyze the mechanics of the reconstruction. And as far as he could tell, the letter only traveled through time, but not space. In other words, his future self must have drawn the transmutation circle right there on Mustang’s kitchen table. And he chose to send it back to that particular date and hour because he remembered having breakfast with Mustang that morning.

That would explain his most glaring question; namely, how he managed to send the letter back at all without his alchemy. Mustang must have completed the transmutation for him. Ed has to admit he’s surprised that Mustang would agree to aid him in something so reckless and potentially destructive, but what other option could there be?

After all, it’s Alphonse. Maybe Mustang had enough pity for them both.

That summer, Al stays in Amestris. And the next summer. And the next.

Life goes on. Al enrolls in a doctorate program. Mustang stumbles across a nice lady who reads incessantly and has the best taste in music. Ed has lunch with them every once in a while when he can’t fabricate a convincing excuse.

One time over coffee, Mustang accidentally grazes his leg beneath the table, but immediately pulls away without missing a beat. The conversation continues on with no acknowledgement, but Ed can barely contain his jealousy over the easy smiles and casual touches that the pair across from him are exchanging.

He doesn’t hate this woman. He doesn’t even dislike her. But every time he sees her, it's as if she were wearing a jewel that she stole off his finger. Like she's intentionally flaunting Mustang’s affections, even though Ed knows it’s pathetically childish to think such things.

Mustang was never his. She stole nothing. He needs to get on with his life and find someone else.

Time goes on. Al is healthier than ever. In contrast, Ed feels like he’s wasting away. And on the day of Mustang’s wedding, he returns to his barren apartment and cries until all the misery is drained from his body like an infected wound. He rocks himself in his loneliness, curling up on the floor of the shower, cursing himself for falling apart over something so stupid. Something he should have gotten over a long time ago. After all, how can he mourn something he never had? Tomorrow the sun will rise and he will have lost absolutely nothing.

Mustang names his first child Edward. It was also the name of Diane’s father, so it all worked out.

He has to keep reminding himself that none of this pain matters. Whatever misery he's currently living through doesn’t matter.

Because Al is alive.

Ed did it. He successfully cheated the universe and brought his brother back from the grave. He tore a hole in the fabric of reality. Changed the course of history. And whatever collateral damage he caused for the sake of his own selfishness, all of it was worth it.

And whenever the misery grows too sharp, Ed envisions a life without his brother. How desolate and meaningless it would be. The shell of a person he could have been.

And it was all worth it.

And yet, something doesn’t make sense.

He got exactly what he wanted. He won. He spit in the face of God and reclaimed his brother for no other reason than his own personal gain.

And yet he never paid a toll. He sacrificed nothing.

There was no equivalent exchange.


End file.
